How to remove odor from shoes — we use home and professional remedies

An unpleas­ant smell com­ing from shoes can spoil the opin­ion of a per­son in soci­ety. But it often hap­pens that the smell exudes a brand new or min­i­mal­ly worn pair of boots or shoes. What to do in this case — get rid of the pair and buy a new one? Or take things to the dry clean­ers? Yes, you can do both, but why not try to solve the prob­lem at home first? More­over, the vast major­i­ty of funds suit­able for these pur­pos­es are inex­pen­sive. In this arti­cle, Exper­tol­ogy will share with our read­ers tips and meth­ods to help you remove odor from your shoes and pre­vent it from reap­pear­ing.

The main causes of the problem

If you know why and how this sit­u­a­tion can arise, you can eas­i­ly pre­vent it or find the best ways to solve it. So, there can be sev­er­al rea­sons for the appear­ance of an unpleas­ant smell from shoes. The main ones — the prod­ucts have already served their time, their inner sur­face is heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed and worn out; the own­er has dis­eases of the skin of the legs and / or nails, for exam­ple, a fun­gus; prod­ucts are not looked after, they are con­stant­ly dirty, wet, stored in damp­ness. There are also a num­ber of rea­sons why they can emit a strange, unpleas­ant odor:

1. The shoes were made from poor qual­i­ty mate­ri­als, there were vio­la­tions of man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy, there was improp­er stor­age or trans­porta­tion. In this case, a char­ac­ter­is­tic chem­i­cal “stink” will be emit­ted by a prod­uct that has nev­er even been worn.

2. Incor­rect, inap­pro­pri­ate use of a par­tic­u­lar type of footwear. For exam­ple, wear­ing san­dals in liq­uid mud, wear­ing rub­ber boots on a bare foot in heat and humid­i­ty for a long time.

3. Urine of domes­tic ani­mals or odor­ous secre­tions of their glands. A very com­mon prob­lem among urban res­i­dents who have cats or dogs. In this case, the char­ac­ter­is­tic unpleas­ant smell of “cat urine” will come from the shoes. And it will be nec­es­sary not only to remove this smell from the shoes, but also to wean the ani­mal from leav­ing it on the own­er’s wardrobe items.

4. Defeat by the prod­ucts of the vital activ­i­ty of par­a­sitic insects. If bed­bugs, cock­roach­es or oth­er insects have start­ed up in the apart­ment, then things and shoes can stink with a char­ac­ter­is­tic “aro­ma”. In this case, you must first get rid of the par­a­sites in the room, and then elim­i­nate the con­se­quences of their expan­sion.

Hav­ing found out the cause of the unpleas­ant odor, you need to elim­i­nate it if pos­si­ble, wash the prod­ucts inside, and no longer allow the cir­cum­stances and con­di­tions in which an unpleas­ant odor occurs in the shoes.

How to remove the smell with improvised means

To treat the smell, you can use the prod­ucts that are found in the home first aid kit or in the kitchen. Here is some of them:

1. 
   Vod­ka or alco­hol dilut­ed with water. The liq­uid is wiped with the inter­nal space of the prod­ucts or sprayed from a spray bot­tle. Leave for sev­er­al hours, wipe dry with a paper tow­el, allow to dry com­plete­ly, ven­ti­late.

2. 
   Ammo­nia. We process the shoes in the same way as with vod­ka, only we will have to allo­cate more time for air­ing, since for some time the smell of ammo­nia will come from the pair.

3. 
   Vine­gar or vine­gar essence (in this case, dilute with water at the rate of 1 tea­spoon of essence per 0.5 cup of water). We moist­en the inner space with liq­uid in the most con­ve­nient way, let it stand for 3–4 hours, dry it with nap­kins, ven­ti­late, let it dry com­plete­ly.

4. 
   Essen­tial oil with antibac­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties, for exam­ple, oil of euca­lyp­tus, conif­er­ous, mint, cloves, cin­na­mon, thyme, oregano, tea tree. You can mix sev­er­al essen­tial oils to enhance the effect. We mea­sure 5–6 drops of the prod­uct into a con­tain­er, dip the tip of a cot­ton swab into it, process the insole and oth­er inter­nal sur­faces of the shoe. Then leave for a few hours, wipe, ven­ti­late.

5. 
   Bak­ing soda or fine table salt, a mix­ture of salt and soda. We pour a few table­spoons of the prod­uct into the shoes, shake it so that it is even­ly dis­trib­uted over the insole, put the shoes in a bag and close it care­ful­ly. We leave for 5–6 hours, take out a cou­ple, shake out the soda.

Also, many users are inter­est­ed in whether it is pos­si­ble to remove the smell from shoes by wash­ing them? Yes, this is a good way to get rid of the aro­ma, but only if you are sure that after such expo­sure the vapor will not fall apart. If it is glued with high-qual­i­ty glue or stitched, if it has already got­ten wet before and noth­ing has hap­pened to it, you can try to wash it. Do not use deter­gent for this. It is bet­ter to take baby sham­poo, and even bet­ter — ordi­nary laun­dry soap, because it has an antibac­te­r­i­al effect and does not leave behind an extra­ne­ous odor. We take a bar of soap, rub it on a fine kitchen grater to make shav­ings. Add some warm water to it and wait for com­plete dis­so­lu­tion. After that, we foam with a sponge and col­lect a lit­tle foam on the sponge, we process the inter­nal space. Next, we blot with a paper tow­el and stuff the shoes with crum­pled paper (ordi­nary office or news­pa­per). We change the paper as it absorbs mois­ture, we act in this way until the prod­ucts are com­plete­ly dry. If after pro­cess­ing you have soap essence left, do not rush to throw it away. This prod­uct can be used for man­u­al clean­ing, wash­ing var­i­ous sur­faces in the kitchen, wash­ing dish­es and even wash­ing chil­dren’s clothes.

How to remove odor from shoes with special means

There is noth­ing eas­i­er than get­ting rid of an unpleas­ant odor using spe­cial­ized prepa­ra­tions. They are designed for just such pur­pos­es, they have an effec­tive and safe com­po­si­tion, they cope with the most per­sis­tent and repul­sive odors. Here are a few prod­ucts that you can buy in a store or order online:

1. 
   Odor neu­tral­iz­er Hel­me­tex Shoes. Removes the prob­lem of unpleas­ant odors in every­day and sports shoes (sneak­ers, skates, roller skates, wrestling shoes, ski boots), cleans the inner sur­face and insoles from bac­te­ria. Extends the ser­vice life of prod­ucts.

2. 
   Shoe odor remover Shoes Odor­Gone. Del­i­cate clean­er, leaves no residue after treat­ment. It does not con­tain alco­hol or sim­i­lar aggres­sive ingre­di­ents. The spray is neu­tral to all types of mate­ri­als — fab­rics, leather, var­nish, paints.

3. 
   GraSS odor remover Smell block. Uni­ver­sal inex­pen­sive tool for man­u­al clean­ing, effec­tive­ly blocks any unpleas­ant odors.

4. 
   SALTON Expert Odor neu­tral­iz­er. The drug is designed to com­plete­ly and per­ma­nent­ly elim­i­nate the prob­lem of unpleas­ant odors in shoes. Instant­ly elim­i­nates the smell of sweat, effec­tive­ly dis­in­fects shoes, elim­i­nat­ing 100% of bac­te­ria and fun­gi, and helps pre­vent mycotic dis­eases of the skin and nails.

This, of course, is far from all the drugs pre­sent­ed in the assort­ment of stores, the choice and price range allow you to choose the best funds for every “taste” and bud­get. The method of use for each of the list­ed prod­ucts is dif­fer­ent, but they are usu­al­ly sold in con­ve­nient pack­ag­ing in the form of a spray bot­tle and are applied by sim­ple spray­ing. The user only needs to apply the drug to the inside of the shoe, wait for it to work and dry the pair.

Precautions when cleaning shoes from an unpleasant odor

Experts rec­om­mend not to make com­mon mis­takes when deal­ing with an unpleas­ant smell in shoes:

1. Don’t just try to dis­guise a per­sis­tent scent. First you need to try to elim­i­nate the cause of its occur­rence, or at least sub­ject the inte­ri­or of the shoe to clean­ing with water and soap. The smell of per­fume or air fresh­en­er lay­ered on top of a bad “scent” will only exac­er­bate the prob­lem.

2. If you are treat­ing the odor with any of the sug­gest­ed prod­ucts, be sure to wait until the shoes are com­plete­ly dry. It is impos­si­ble to put it on when wet, before the steam dries not only out­side, but also inside. Dry­ing can be accel­er­at­ed by plac­ing boots or boots in the hot sun out­doors.

3. Do not use all the rec­om­mend­ed prod­ucts in a row, alter­nate­ly, as you will only ruin the shoe lin­ing. If one or two drugs do not help to cope with an unpleas­ant odor, it is bet­ter to take the shoes to a dry clean­er.

4. No need to try to use any tech­ni­cal or obvi­ous­ly tox­ic prepa­ra­tions that are not intend­ed for house­hold use to dis­in­fect / deodor­ize shoes. First­ly, the smell can become even worse from this, and sec­ond­ly, tox­ic fumes and chem­i­cal residues on the inside of the prod­uct can adverse­ly affect the health of the per­son who wears it.

5. When pro­cess­ing with any home or spe­cial­ized means, try not to get liq­uids on the out­er area of ​​the shoe so that there is no threat of dam­age to the mate­r­i­al from which the prod­uct is made.

And the last rec­om­men­da­tion — in order to avoid harm to health, all pro­ce­dures for elim­i­nat­ing unpleas­ant odors from shoes should be car­ried out with rub­ber gloves, as well as in a res­pi­ra­tor or in a home­made ban­dage on the nose and mouth area.

Prevention measures

To make sure your shoes nev­er smell bad again, take these sim­ple pre­cau­tions:

1. Use shoes only for their intend­ed pur­pose. That is, do not walk in warm boots when it is +15 out­side, do not run in light sneak­ers on ice and snow. Feet in such con­di­tions will be uncom­fort­able, they will sweat or freeze, as a result of which the smell of sweat will appear or the skin will become more vul­ner­a­ble to fun­gal infec­tions.

2. Nev­er wear some­one else’s shoes so that you don’t smell bad in yours (and don’t let oth­er peo­ple wear your shoes). The microflo­ra on the skin of each per­son is indi­vid­ual, you can eas­i­ly catch some kind of dis­ease if a per­son is a car­ri­er, even if he does not have the cor­re­spond­ing symp­toms.

3. If we are not talk­ing about san­dals, slip­pers, san­dals, always wear socks, tights or so-called “foot­prints” to lim­it skin con­tact in the inner uphol­stery of shoes, to pre­vent the repro­duc­tion of path­o­gen­ic microor­gan­isms.

4. Always dry your shoes thor­ough­ly if they get wet. But do not place it on heat­ing appli­ances or near heat sources, there is a big risk that it will crack. It is bet­ter to use spe­cial inter­nal dry­ers or ordi­nary balls from crum­pled old news­pa­pers. The filler is changed until it stops absorb­ing mois­ture, then there is no smell of damp­ness or mold in the inte­ri­or of the shoe.

5. Store shoes cor­rect­ly — put any absorbent on the insole — bags with spe­cial gran­ules that absorb mois­ture and smell, sachets with crushed acti­vat­ed car­bon or soda / salt, that is, you can use any sub­stance that does not have its own smell and can absorb any extra­ne­ous “aro­ma”. You can put cloth bags with deodor­ants — ground cof­fee, crushed peels and skins of cit­rus fruits, with aro­mat­ic herbs (which can also have dis­in­fec­tant prop­er­ties, such as sage, mint, St. John’s wort, chamomile) in boots or shoes. Unused tea bags with ordi­nary black or green tea also absorb mois­ture and odors well.

Prop­er stor­age and use of shoes is a guar­an­tee that the prob­lem of unpleas­ant odor will no longer both­er you, and things will last a long time and will be in excel­lent con­di­tion.